There is a scene in Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor’s new film in which she gives a hug unlike any other hug you’ll see on screen. The film is Nickel Boys, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel based on the real-life horror of Florida’s Dozier School for Boys, with Ellis-Taylor playing Hattie, the grandmother of Elwood (Ethan Herisse), a boy incarcerated there. In the scene, she is prevented from visiting her much-missed grandson, but encounters a friend of his (Brandon Wilson), who becomes a kind of emotional proxy.
What makes this hug so special, though, is not just the intensity of the human moment, but the way it exemplifies the power of the first-person perspective, which director RaMell Ross utilises throughout his film. Watching it, you the viewer feel as if you are also being enveloped in Hattie’s arms. “RaMell is a scholar, you know what I mean?” says Ellis-Taylor, an enlivening sight this morning, with her cropped, bleached hair, red lipstick and warmly engaging manner.
